The NY Times wrote that banks are downplaying promotional activities at events to avoid perceptions that they are big spenders and out of touch with the financial realities of the day.
They are apparently not going so far as to totally shun promotions and events; they are just being very low key about their participation.
According to the article:
...where these companies once splashed their names and logos on every
polo shirt and tote bag in sight, they are now going to extraordinary
lengths not to be noticed.. Take the U.S. Open golf tournament.. Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley
all brought clients to watch the tournament and dine at a buffet and
open bar. But an observer would never have known the banks were there.
Guests of the banks sat at tables, each costing $50,000, with no indication of who was paying for them. Nor were the bank’s names on any of the other displays of corporate sponsors.
Those who plan corporate events call the new practice “stealth spending.” In some cases, a corporate gathering is so well disguised that the event planners may not even know whose event they are working on.
We practically invented the stealth campaign in tech PR. The objective for such campaigns was to build anticipation leading to a payoff in terms of actually revealing info such as company or product launch at some point. Here, the objective seems to be to stay stealthy, leading one to wonder what they really get out of it, if there are diminishing returns and if it is worth the negative publicity.
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